It is widely known to use position adjusting pins for positioning and/or adjusting components prior to and/or during an assembly, machining, or forming process.
Thus, for example, two plates to be welded in opposing positions may be positioned by one respective adjusting pin and thus fixed in their position relative to one another to be secured. If a bore is present in the body component, the adjusting pin may be inserted into said bore as a locating feature for positioning and/or securing the corresponding body component. Thus the adjusting pin may be inserted into the bore in the manner of a adjusting pin, whereby a positionally accurate adjustment of the body component is possible.
A single locating feature (such as a hole) in a component, for example in the A-column (master 4-way locator) may be engaged several time (up to four times is not uncommon) by different holding or locating devices or frames during an assembly process. In such a case, the component is stopped in a defined position and the device which is fastened to a robot or a linear movement receiver is then moved toward the body. Rough adjustment guides and fine adjustment guides may be used to avoid damage and substantial deviations of the pins from the feature position. The pin may be of pointed/conical shape on the tip or component-engaging end, subsequently merging into a cylindrical shape, in order to be able to compensate for deviations of, for example up to 5 mm from the nominal or final position.
In this case, a pin with a pointed or conical tip may be utilized in order to insert and accurately align the device.
As a result of the high weight of the devices (up to 500 Kg) together with the necessity of achieving the shortest possible production cycle times (saving process time), the insertion of a conically shaped pin may also leads to damage to the locating hole which may manifest itself as a radial protrusion or axial indentation.
It is possible, therefore, that subsequent alignment operations are no longer able to achieve the required dimensional setting quality, as the locating hole has been effectively “enlarged” and/or stretched in the preliminary steps. Moreover, due to the deformation, subsequently inserted sealing plugs are potentially unable to sit correctly and may no longer be able to perform their sealing functions. This fault is particularly serious as it is difficult to detect. Often, the end customer is the first to detect the error by discovering water in the interior.
The generally known adjusting pin is produced from steel and is subjected to a relatively high degree of wear in the entire outer region of the front part, which disadvantageously leads to a relatively short service life and frequent replacement. Additionally, it may be necessary to reposition an adjusting pin as a result of the wear.
Attempts have been made to make the adjusting pin more wear-resistant by using a connecting part comprising a ceramic material. This, however, does not provide a solution to the above problems of the stretching of the adjustment holes and/or locating holes.